Corey Klemow read this post then sent me this…
Minor question about the "Mouse That Roared" pilot — it runs for 32 minutes and 33 seconds. Most hour-long shows in 1966 had approximately 50 minutes of actual content and ten minutes of commercials. Most sitcoms had about 25 minutes of content and 5 minutes of commercials.
So what's up with a 32.5 minute pilot? Presuming this was going to be a half-hour sitcom, is it a rough cut they were planning on hacking about 7.5 minutes out of before broadcast if it was picked up? It seems to me that in those days before streaming you'd want to demonstrate to a network that you could turn in a product that was the proper length. Then again, maybe that's part of why this didn't get picked up…?
Networks sometimes (note the italics) will tell the producers of pilots that it's not necessary to make them broadcast-ready because they may never be broadcast…and you'll notice that The Mouse That Roared video says on it, "Not for broadcast." They just want to see the concept and the show and the cast and what the thing looks like…and if it's longer, it might give them more of a sense of the program.
I don't think this ever aired. If it did, they probably went back in and did some editing to get it down to the right length for a thirty-minute time slot. But it probably didn't. This is not unusual.
The last live-action pilot that I worked on — I think I was co-producer — was a science-fantasy thing for Fox and we were explicitly told that we didn't have to — and shouldn't even try to — deliver it in broadcast-ready format. So among the many things we did differently was that we didn't spend any money recording a soundtrack or buying the rights to existing music. We just plugged in records — some pretty great stuff, as I recall — and if they'd decided to air the show, we would have gone back in and replaced that music or bought the rights to use it.
I think that pilot, which was for an hour series, ran about an hour without commercials. Again, had they decided to air it, it would have been altered. The networks don't always allow this. Sometimes, they want a pilot delivered in a form that could air if they so chose. But sometimes, they don't.
